St. Ann School wins grant that's nothing to sneeze at

Who would imagine that a small Central Jersey school could best thousands of larger schools across the United States? The families of St. Ann School believed it – and did it.

Recently, Kleenex brand ran a contest to award $500,000 — the 100 schools who collected the most Facebook votes would each receive $5,000. St. Ann School holds the distinction of being the top ranked of only two New Jersey schools to be named as a grant recipient. Sarah Stangota, of Flemington, partnered with another mom to drive the school’s efforts. Stangota recalled, “When I learned of the contest, I thought it was worth taking a chance. Although we are a small school — that some refer to as ‘the best kept secret in Raritan’ — we’ve had a Facebook community for three years now and decided to challenge our ‘friends’ to help us make this grant a reality.

Students, parents and alumni reached out to relatives, friends and neighbors and quickly moved us into the Top 100. We climbed into the mid-40s, but then we started to fall in the rankings – 55, 64, 70, 76; it looked like we’d be knocked out of contention. Hours before the contest deadline, our parents were attending Back-to-School night and we sent them home with the assignment to ‘secure another vote’.” Over the next few hours, St. Ann’s moved from #76 to #38 nationwide – a position that they held until the contest deadline.

Last year St. Ann School launched its Distance Learning program which uses interactive videoconferencing technology to enable virtual field trips or to allow students to learn from a remote instructor. Sister Gloria Caglioti, Principal indicated, “the grant will be used to fund additional Distance Learning programs and support an outdoor classroom that is currently under development.” She added, “We’re so thankful to everyone whose vote helped make this happen.”